Obituary
Martha Mason
Remembered
Martha Mason, a woman who lived in an iron died early on
May 4th. She had bested polio, once a pandemic disease, over 60 years of her
lifetime after being told she wouldn't live to her teen years. Mason, a most
unusual world record setter, lived in an iron lung for sixty years, longer than
anyone else.
One month shy of her 72nd birthday. Mason died early in
the day at home in tiny Lattimore, S.C., where she had "lived above" her
disease flat on her back for more than 61 years. Mason spent most of her life
confined to an 800-pound, 7-foot airtight yellow tube that enabled her to
breathe, though she could leave the machine for about an hour a few times a day
when she was young. But several bouts of pneumonia in her 20s further weakened
her already frail body. Mason had always said that she would not let polio beat
her. Her life demonstrated that she meant what she said.
Martha Mason was 11 and in an Asheville hospital when she
was told, "You'll never walk again. You'll never bathe or feed yourself again.
You're basically an excellent mind and an exuberant spirit locked in an inert
body - a prison. Can you live with that?" "No," began the answer, "but I can
live above it."
That dire diagnosis and defiant response came one year
after polio invaded her body the same day her beloved, brother, Gaston, who
died from polio, was buried.
She wrote in 2002, "As a youngster, in pre-polio days, I
enjoyed sports and considered myself an athlete .... proud of my physical
strength ... unusually self-reliant. Suddenly, I was an 11-year-old
quadriplegic, I was not strong and I was completely reliant on others .... I
would not be a whiner, but what would I be? ..."
What she would be is a person who never met a stranger,
someone who overcame any obstacle deterring whatever goal she set and an
inspiration whose influence will live on in the world.
This amazing woman and her iron lung completed high school
and attended Gardner-Webb College. She attended Wake Forest University the same
way. She graduated first in her class and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors. Using a
voice-activated computer at home in Lattimore, she wrote her memoir, "Breath,
Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung." Martha has said, "I think I was born with
supercharged, competitive genes. I always expect to win the gold." Actually,
Martha Mason has spun for us all a golden legacy of human will trumping
adversity. From her home on Oak Street, Martha Mason reached into the lives of
people across the country and even the world.
Mason told an ABC News reporter just before her 71st
birthday, "My story's been one of joy, one of wonderful experiences. It has not
been perfect. But that's what people need to understand - that I have had a
good life."
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